I was listening to journalist Kylie Cheung today talking with Aaron Maté on Useful Idiots and I was struck by how closely the subject of her new book mirrors the work we’ve been doing here at DomesticAssault.com.
Her book, Playing the Victim: How the Powerful Deny and Attack Survivors of Violence, from Domestic Abuse to Genocide, was released on October 20, 2026. Its central argument deserves attention far beyond the field of domestic violence.
The tactics used by domestic abusers to maintain control do not necessarily stop at the front door. They can become the operating procedures of institutions, political movements, media organizations, and governments.
And one of the most effective of those tactics has a name.
DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender
Psychologist Jennifer Freyd identified the pattern in 1997.
An individual confronted with wrongdoing denies what happened, attacks the person raising the accusation, and reverses the roles of victim and offender.
The person who experienced the harm becomes the accused. The person accused of inflicting the harm claims to be the victim.
Consider what happens when a woman reports domestic violence.
Her partner denies it. Then he attacks her credibility. She’s unstable. She’s vindictive. She’s trying to destroy his reputation. She’s alienating the children. She’s abusing the legal system.
Before long, instead of examining the violence she reported, everyone is examining her.
Her emotional stability. Her motives. Her parenting. Her anger. Her credibility.
The original allegation hasn’t been resolved. It has been buried beneath accusations against the person who dared to make it.
The abuser has changed the subject, and the institutions responsible for accountability may follow his lead.
When the Courts Become Part of the Abuse
One of the most disturbing sections of Cheung’s book, published as an excerpt by Spitfire News, examines the weaponization of defamation lawsuits against survivors who speak publicly about sexual violence.
Legal action can become another means of exercising control.
A survivor already dealing with trauma may suddenly face years of litigation, substantial legal expenses, demands for private records, and the possibility of financial ruin.
Cheung discusses cases involving campus sexual assault, allegations against public officials, and disputes over custody and reproductive autonomy.
The common thread is not simply that victims encounter disbelief.
It is that systems supposedly designed to provide justice can be used to impose additional suffering.
And this is where domestic violence becomes an institutional problem.
A survivor may escape the immediate physical presence of an abuser while remaining trapped in a network of legal, financial, and social relationships through which that person can continue exercising control.
Leaving an abusive relationship does not necessarily end the abuse. Sometimes it changes the location of the abuse.
Why Victims Are Expected to Be Perfect
Cheung also explores the expectation that victims must behave in ways that make other people comfortable.
They must be calm but not detached. Emotional but not hysterical. Cooperative but not submissive. Strong enough to survive but never angry enough to challenge anyone.
A victim who resists may suddenly be accused of aggression.
A victim who becomes angry may be accused of instability.
A victim who refuses reconciliation may be accused of cruelty.
The demand for a perfect victim serves a purpose: it makes credibility conditional upon compliance.
And that is another form of control.
Survivors should not have to demonstrate perfect behavior to establish that they have been harmed.
Resistance to abuse is not proof that the abuse never happened.
From Domestic Violence to Political Power
Cheung takes this analysis beyond intimate relationships and applies it to propaganda, imperialism, and state violence.
In her Useful Idiots interview, she discusses the political framing of Israel’s actions in Gaza and examines media narratives, including commentary by CNN’s Dana Bash.
Her argument is that perpetrators of state violence can present themselves as victims and characterize the people subjected to that violence as aggressors.
She connects this to rhetoric that treats resistance as evidence of wrongdoing while obscuring the underlying power imbalance.
This comparison deserves serious examination.
The histories, responsibilities, and legal standards involved in domestic abuse and armed conflict are remarkably similar and the question Cheung raises is important:
What happens when the most powerful party in a conflict acquires the authority to define who is the victim?
When that authority goes unquestioned, the public may begin judging the conduct of those who resist without adequately examining the conduct of those who hold power.
The same inversion can occur inside a household, a courtroom, an institution, or a political system.
The Research Behind DARVO
DARVO is not simply a catchy acronym or a theory of manipulation.
In research published in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma in 2020, Sarah Harsey and Jennifer Freyd examined how DARVO influenced observers’ perceptions of victims and perpetrators.
Their findings demonstrated that participants exposed to DARVO were more likely to perceive victims as less believable and more responsible for the violence they experienced.
Perpetrators, meanwhile, were viewed as less responsible.
Even more important, a second experiment found that teaching people about DARVO reduced some of these distortions.
That finding is significant.
It tells us that understanding the manipulation can help people resist it.
But recognition alone is not enough.
Awareness Without Infrastructure Isn’t Enough
At Domestic Assault, we have repeatedly returned to one fundamental problem.
We can teach people to recognize domestic violence. We can explain coercive control, gaslighting, intimidation, economic abuse, and DARVO. We can encourage survivors to speak out.
But what happens when they do?
Who protects them when their abuser retaliates?
Who intervenes when the legal process becomes an extension of the abuse?
Who challenges institutional decisions that privilege reputation over evidence?
Who ensures that the survivor does not pay financially, socially, and psychologically for seeking protection?
These are not merely questions about awareness.
They are questions about infrastructure, professional accountability, and the willingness of institutions to confront the misuse of power.
A system that recognizes abuse but allows its mechanisms to continue operating has not solved the problem.
It has learned to describe it.
When a Survivor’s Trauma Becomes a Campaign Advertisement
Consider what happened to Dr. Amy Acton, the Ohio gubernatorial candidate who has spoken publicly about being sexually abused by her stepfather at age twelve. Her estranged mother, who remained with the man charged with raping her daughter, appeared in a campaign advertisement for Vivek Ramaswamy calling Acton a liar and questioning her mental health. Ramaswamy acknowledged responsibility for the advertisement and committed $4 million to promoting it. Trump publicly celebrated the attack as “hitting pay dirt.” At an Iowa rally, he described advising Ramaswamy to keep running it and to look toward heaven and thank God for the opportunity. This is a striking contemporary example of the institutional victim-blaming examined in this article: a survivor’s estranged parent attacks her credibility, and powerful political figures amplify those accusations while the history of childhood abuse receives no mention in the advertisement. The controversy has drawn condemnation from Democrats and Republicans alike, including Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.
Stop Rewarding the Reversal
DARVO succeeds when attention shifts away from the original wrongdoing and onto the person who reported it.
The response is not to assume every accusation is true or every denial is false. It is to refuse to let intimidation, character assassination, or theatrical claims of victimhood substitute for evidence.
Return to the underlying conduct.
Examine the evidence.
Identify the power relationships.
Recognize retaliation when it occurs.
Protect people who report abuse from being punished for doing so.
And demand accountability from institutions that enable the reversal.
Kylie Cheung’s Playing the Victim adds an important dimension to the conversation about domestic assault. It asks us to recognize that the politics of power and the psychology of abuse may be more closely connected than many people realize.
The abuser’s greatest victory is not always escaping accountability. Sometimes it is persuading everyone else to punish the victim.
And until we understand how that happens, we will continue allowing the mechanisms of abuse to operate under the appearance of justice.
Join Our Community
Abuse thrives when victims are silenced, perpetrators control the narrative, and institutions protect power instead of people. Understanding DARVO is one way we can begin to change that.
Domestic Assault is a place to expose these patterns, challenge institutional betrayal, amplify survivors’ voices, and turn awareness into meaningful action.
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Further Reading and Listening
Kylie Cheung, Playing the Victim: How the Powerful Deny and Attack Survivors of Violence, from Domestic Abuse to Genocide — North Atlantic Books, October 20, 2026.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/826796/playing-the-victim-by-kylie-cheung/
Kylie Cheung, “How Abusers Weaponize Lawsuits to Punish Their Victims” — Spitfire News, October 21, 2026.
https://spitfirenews.com/p/kylie-cheung-playing-the-victim-excerpt-darvo-defamation
Kylie Cheung, “Perfect Victims” — Welcome to Hell World, October 23, 2026.
https://www.welcometohellworld.com/playing-the-victim-2/
Useful Idiots — Interview with Kylie Cheung
Sarah Harsey and Jennifer Freyd, DARVO Research (2020) — Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.
Great article.
This reminds me of how peaceful protest has so frequently resulted in violent reprisal, especially in matters of "cultural defense," and how using terms like "you made me do it," or "don't make me do this" is a code for the entitlement to dominance.